Humanity. In two easy lessons.

Honey? What are you doing up? I just read this: Father drowns sons, self. Now I can't sleep. (Hugging me) Please don't cry. Come to bed... I'll just see it in my head. I'm going to listen to happy music for a while. Famously in the Blogiverse, a few weeks ago Getupgrrl wrote a post in response to an email that she got. Getupgrrl was being urged to help convince Dooce to continue breastfeeding. In case you were in a cave listening to Captain and Tenille that week, Dooce weaned her 6 month-old daughter so she could go on anti-depressants. Yeah. No-brainer. Let's not forget the part where Getupgrrl was chosen as the target of the email because, as a woman fighting infertility, Getupgrrl would be clearly a poignant voice of "be grateful for the child". The email said, in part: Maybe it would help her to hear from someone who can't even have what she has and she takes for granted! Kind of like having Getupgrrl tell Dooce to eat her stinking beets because children in Getupgrrl country are starving for yummy yummy beets. An hour with a Jesuit in a locked room with a whiteboard and, trust me, this argument quickly becomes so much shredded words. Plus? You'll find yourself rabidly craving a glass of scotch. But that's off the point. But Getupgrrl took this 7 layer salad of insulting ignorance and made a fine, intelligent response. And funny. But mostly? Intelligent. Like a gong echoing throughout a temple, Getupgrrl made two incredibly good points that resonated deep into my soul. 1) If you truly love children, then you must love their parents. Actually, Getupgrrl made the reverse point - "be suspicious of people who claim to love Motherhood but who always seem to hate actual mothers". But I'm a proactive kind of gal. This means: if you wanted children to grow up well then you must want for their parents to have the means of raising them well. Safety, sanity, self-respect, air, laughter, food, love, kindness, health, empathy are not just the needs of children - they are also the needs of their parents. To tend to its leaves you must look to the tree. Years ago when I was working at BigTeleCo, as a single woman I often got to work holidays and overtime with a group of likewise single people that included a man from India, Sri. Sri was often thought of as too polite and self-effacing because he was always the first to raise his hand. One night, late, one of the other single women, Strident, exploded at Sri: "Why did you volunteer for this crap assignment AGAIN? Just because you're single? Why should Guy-with-kids get special treatment? Tell me that!" And I remember Sri saying, ever so gently, to Strident: "Because Guy's children are my responsibility, too." 2) Parents, put on your own air mask first. Do what you need to do to be a functioning adult, capable of caring for others. By making sure that you are all right, you are tending to the lives of your children. The axiom can be bent by sociopaths who want to justify partying all night while their kids sleep alone locked in a closet. "Hey, I'm a better parent when I'm happy and my kid doesn't mind sleeping with a vacuum cleaner." But those same people can also bend "Don't step on the grass" into justification for cooking marijuana highs into their kids' brownies so let's not debate the finer points of crazy, m'kay? It's just practical to know that if you make sure your kids have air first and then pass out and die before you can get your own air mask on, you're not exactly exhibiting good parenting skills. Seems obvious, but I had to learn this on the slow train. When I was nursing my son, Bear, my milk was just not as plentiful as he needed. I did everything. Every remedy, every suggestion. And the more I stressed, the less milk I had. It began to feel like a tale from Brothers Grimm. It was only when I started letting my husband and friends help me that I began to relax. And of course, the cycle was then reversed. Well, wasn't life grand to drop this lesson so neatly in my lap? The better I take care of myself, the better parent I can be. Well. Wasn't this exactly the point that Dooce was taking to heart in making sure that she got the help she needed to combat her illness? Truthfully? I have no easy words of summation. I am haunted by this story about this father who let the black get him and didn't reach out for help. I am haunted by the faces of his lost sons, what they went through watching their father prepare them for death. I am haunted about a stranger causing anguish to Dooce. I am haunted that they attempted to skewer Getupgrrl's pain to the purpose. I can't sleep tonight for my waking nightmares. I don't see any kindness in any of it. I don't see a shred of the best of us. I just don't freaking get it.